All of Miranda's losses have come to undefeated fighters and all have been or become world champions. Chilemba has 1 loss and 1 draw and from what I see far from an elite fighter. Why do so many people think Chilemba will win this fight? What am I missing?
Miranda is pretty limited although his one trick is pretty good. Chilemba looks like the better boxer but I think this fight is closer than most are predicting. Chilemba was dropped twice in the 8th round in his last fight on US soil (legit knockdowns) and took this fight on 3 weeks notice. Miranda will no doubt re-test Chilemba's chin.
Initially I when I heard about this fight I thought Chilemba easy. Chilemba had a clear victory over a good fighter in Vlasov, and Miranda hasn't looked great in alot of his recent fights. He looked outmatched with Despaigne and not that special with Karikuki. That said, I've only seen Chilemba fight with Vlasov. He impressed me in that fight, but he was also alot bigger than Vlasov and Vlasov was able to finally get to him. I don't know if Chilemba is as strong or sound as Despaigne, he doesn't look like he has a lot of power, if Mirand turns this into a grind, he might be able to stop Chilemba later in the fight. I'll be rooting for Miranda, a win here will get him another title shot at LHW, maybe against Cloud or Shumenov. I wouldn't mind seeing him finally get a crack at Pascal after Pascal ducked him years ago.
He's shown he can come into a fight less than completely focused. I like to watch him fight, but he needs to stick to business. His KO power hasn't translated up and he can be outboxed. Not sure which way I'm going with this fight. Haven't seen much of Chilemba TBH. Pantera has had a lot of chances, but I wouldn't mind seeing him get another. What's the story there?
Back when they were both at 168 (after the Pavlik fight and before the Abraham fight), Miranda and Pascal were going back and forth about fighting each other. They had the two on the same card in seperate fights to promote a fight between them. Pascal struggled with Omar Pittman and Miranda destroyed David Banks in the main event. The idea was to have them fight in Canada, but after that Pascal got cold feet and the fight never happened. There was alot of back and forth in the media, and after that night Pascal went silent. Miranda ended up going after Kessler then finally getting Abraham to come up and fight him.
Never said he did, he fought Sartison instead for the WBA. But there was a lot of talk of Kessler coming to the US for a Miranda fight back then.
Nice recap! Not necessarily Kessler, nut his promoter disappeared after everything was agreed to. Lots of threads about what happen here. That was a sick KO. I saw joe tessitore yesterday and he said he has never heard a KO so loud. If anyone was in the Hard Rock that night it sounded like an explosion. It was loud on TV, but nothing compared to being there.
One of my favs.......ironically, Pascal is being interviewed at the time of the KO. Now wonder if he didn't want any......lol. [ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvMdh08bW1c&feature=youtube_gdata_player[/ame] You were there P2000?